Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Forest Intelligence

This paper introduces the Forest Art Intelligence (FAI) Project - and appears in the Australian Journal of Environmental Education's Critical Forest Studies Edition, launched on April 2026. The paper was first published online by Cambridge University Press on  07 January 2026.

Access the paper online here: https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2025.10111

Abstract:
In an era of accelerating ecological degradation, how might experimental art practices help audiences foster deeper, more empathetic engagement with the intelligence of living systems? This paper explores the potential of contemporary art, when aligned with ecological science, to reframe forest regeneration as a site of aesthetic and ethical inquiry — by regarding the forest as a primary composer within artistic and ecological frameworks. It asks: how might this approach underpin a novel form of ‘Critical Forest Pedagogy’ capable of deepening our understanding of the collective natural intelligence of the living world and encouraging long-term conservation?

To test these ideas, a new art-science project, Forest Art Intelligence, was initiated, framing a regenerating forest as an evolving, living artwork. Because forests evolve through stages mediated by life, death, regeneration, and human influence, those stages of growth can also be framed as ‘process art’ – a practice that values each stage of an artwork’s transformation. Collectively therefore this approach proposes a form of art-led ‘Critical Forest Pedagogy’ suited to engaging communities traditionally unaligned with conservation, while remaining relevant to ecologically cognate audiences. It further asks whether this framing might promote a rethinking of restrictive, human-centred definitions of intelligence that underpin generative AI.